Category Archives: Local Politics

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Ormskirk roads – a review, but any public involvement?

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a Lancashire County press release regarding another road study for Ormskirk. I’ve been completely remiss in not posting this earlier.

Anyhow the press release states:

Lancashire County Council has drawn up a brief for transport consultants who are being asked to assess options and prioritise a range of schemes to tackle congestion and enhance people’s ability to travel more easily.

So, the Tories win control of the Council and the first thing they do is get in a bunch of consultants – at goodness knows what cost – to find out what the people in Ormskirk could probably tell them already!

Perhaps that’s what happens when we have a County Councillor from Parbold.

But, some of this should be welcomed. They say that some of the schemes to be evaluated are:

– Bus improvements
– Park and ride
– Rail service improvements
– Personalised travel planning
– Cycling improvements
– Pedestrian enhancements
– Improvements to the carriageway, junctions and pedestrian facilities on the A570
– Park Road to A59 County Road Link
Ormskirk traffic management improvements including, through traffic rerouting, HGV control, gyratory options and traffic speed controls

It is estimated that the study will take 3-4 months to complete.

During the campaign I argued for such a review and so I can’t help but welcome the fact that one is taking place, but I am critical of the fact that there seems to be no local input at all. We don’t know if this is going to be a relatively minor tweak of the road system or a proper re-engineering of the way the town’s roads work.

The people who live and work in the town have the best knowledge of the road problems, and as I’ve always argued, it’s not just about the Ormskirk bypass – there are problems scattered across the town. There ought to be some significant public input to the process.

Instead, we’re left in the dark and we’ll be told to just take what the Tories and their consultants insist in a couple of months time.

I will be pushing for a some public consultation and review once the consultant’s report has been produced.

Local Politics, Skelmersdale

Skelmersdale College redevelopment – a positive step forward, questions remain

It was reported over the weekend that the LSC has been able to support the Skelmersdale College redevelopment. If it works out, then this is quite simply excellent news for Skelmersdale – promising the first set of redevelopment in the town centre since the Asda was built nearly ten years ago.

The LSC had managed to get itself into a terrible mess with the catastrophic mismanagement of it’s own funds. After over-promising funding to 144 Schools and colleges, it was forced to cancel projects leaving some colleges in a real financial mess. Luckily development work hadn’t started when it was announced that the plug was being pulled.

Some are reporting this as a u-turn by the LSC, as if they hadn’t wanted it in the first place. I disagree – if anything the LSC has always supported the redevelopment of the various colleges – they just ran out of cash.

Everyone involved in the negotiations on behalf of the college should be congratulated for getting the plans back on the table. That includes Newcastle College (the ‘owners’ of Skem and Ormskirk College), Steven Broomhead (Chair of the Skelmersdale & Ormskirk College Advisory Committee), the Borough Council and of course Rosie Cooper who was reported as personally intervening throughout the negotiations.

My only reservation is the following section, reported in the Daily Post:

In a statement the Learning and Skills Council said: “LSC will support the development of Skelmersdale and Ormskirk College in Lancashire which will go forward to the approval process.
…
The college’s project will be subject to submitting a business case to show it is value for money.

The extension work is obviously not yet a “done-deal”, and I hope that this announcement isn’t an exercise in over-spinning a bit of genuinely good news.

It is difficult to see who would actually be funding the extension. The implication in all the reports that I’ve seen is that it is the LSC who, having changed its mind, would fund it again. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The Daily Post report suggests that there will be a new approval process in which the LSC’s role is not actually to fund the extension but instead support the College’s bid. That’s a very different role for the LSC and also means that the scheme is subject to the yet another funding body taking a decision.

There are clearly unanswered questions over who will be taking the final decision, when it will be made and when the work on the college can begin.

Putting that to one side and taking the news at face-value, this announcement still represents a bit of good news for the wider Skelmersdale town centre redevelopment. The college work has always been independent of the St Modwens / West Lancs BC town centre renewal, but has been a key part of the town centre redevelopment as a whole. Any investment in the college could act as a catalyst for the rest of the town centre which has been looking precarious since the Knowsley Everton/Tesco development plans emerged.

Update: Since writing this I notice that Rosie Cooper is reported as saying that the LSC itself has committed the funding for the college:

West Lancashire MP, Rosie Cooper, is delighted with the announcement that funding has been committed by the Learning and Skills Council that will allow Skelmersdale College to go-ahead after it was earlier signalled that the college could not be funded for 2010.

Local Politics, Political Integrity, Skelmersdale, West Lancs

Revealed – Labour’s plan to win West Lancs (rename it Skelmersdale)

I was more than a little surprised a couple of weeks ago when I read the following in a piece on the “Wigan Today” website:


Wigan Today: Cemetery campaign for town

A shortage of graves has prompted a renewed campaign for a new cemetery in West Lancashire.
Rosie Cooper wants a new public facility to be opened at Pippin Street in Skelmersdale so that families no longer have to bear the extra costs of burying a loved one.

All very good… However, I’m pretty certain that there isn’t a Pippin Street in Skelmersdale, and that this refers to the proposed Cemetery to be built by Pippin Street, Burscough. I dismissed the story as a schoolboy journalist error by someone who didn’t know the West Lancs area and forgot about it until I saw this on Rosie’s own website:



Screenshot

The general election next year is going to be difficult for us, particularly in West Lancs where the Tories have a strong hold on all wards in the Constituency outside of the Skelmersdale area (with the proud exception of Bickerstaffe). The bulk of Labour voters live in Skelmersdale and we need to be seen to be delivering – particularly if the town centre plans are scuppered by the new Everton/Tesco development in Knowsley (rumoured to have been agreed by the secretary of state).

It is well known locally that Skelmersdale has run out of burial space and families are forced to have their loved ones buried in neighbouring towns and boroughs.

Rosie has campaigned hard for a cemetery in Skelmersdale since elected in 2005 and last year a planning application was passed for a cemetery in Pippin Street, Burscough, about seven miles (as the crow flies) away from Moorside, Skem – my old patch. To give Rosie credit, she has since campaigned for a new bus route so that families in Skem can visit their loved ones in the proposed Pippin Street cemetery.

However, the newspaper article and website suggest that the local campaigning brains trust has had a stroke (of genius). By simply extending the boundaries of Skelmersdale to take in Pippin Street we can claim to have delivered a new Skelmersdale Cemetery without all the bother of finding a suitable site near the (old) town centre.



View Skem + Cemetery in a larger map

And why should it stop there? We could deliver the long promised hospital by extending the town’s boundaries down Wigan Road (to be fair, it’s a childrens A&E, but it’s a start):


View Skem + hospital in a larger map

In fact, given that on average, someone living in Parbold will live seven to eight years long than someone living in Skelmersdale, we could increase the average life expectancy in Skelmersdale by simply making the town bigger and extending the boundaries out towards Parbold:


View Skem + hospital + parbold in a larger map

It seems to me that this is an campaigning masterstroke. Taking it to the logical conclusion (well one of many) we could take the proposed Skelmersdale cemetery as the new geographical centre and project out seven miles in all directions – creating a new Greater Skelmersdale (Skelmershire?) Delivering for Skem a world-class University at Edge Hill, a beach at what was once Southport, both a childrens and adult A&E, several railway stations and countless other benefits.


View Skelmershire in a larger map

The electoral landscape would also be transformed – pushing the “out of Skem” areas deep into South Ribble and Sefton, and making the whole of what was West Lancs rock-solid Labour areas. Virtually guaranteed to return a Labour MP at the next General Election.

So there you have it. Quite simple really.

Local Politics, Skelmersdale

Painting a wall – the best the Tories can do in Skem?

This month, West Lancs Conservatives proudly boast that they are putting the “heart back into Tanhouse” with the rather nasty inference that it wasn’t there before and that it can only be returned with charity and a donation from the Conservative Association (read: a very small slice of Lord Ashcroft’s millions).

Tory candidate whitewashing community centre Tanhouse, it seems, can be fixed by the Conservative Parliamentary candidate waltzing in with a paint roller and single handedly whitewashing the community centre – as seen in their promo picture.

Their condescending, head-patting, “aren’t we being nice to you poor Scousers” tone is exactly the kind of patronising crap that many of their councillors come out with and which Paul Cotterill has pointed out on numerous occasions over at the Bickerstaffe Record.

They say that the donation from the Conservatives helped renovate “an area of open space to provide a nicer environment for the people of Tanhouse” (my emphasis).

Oh yes, and after you’ve finished painting this wall, you can get back to making Jam and singing Jerusalem in the knowledge that Tanhouse is fixed and you can get on with more important things.

No. The problems across Tanhouse and more widely Skelmersdale, will not be fixed by the occasional community get-together painting walls. It might help a little bit, but the problems run much deeper than a couple of walls with grafitti.

The Tories have been in control of West Lancashire (and therefore Skem) for most of the past quarter century since West Lancs Council was formed. Great strides were made in the late nineties when Labour ran the council and started to address the problems, but these have been undone by the Tories. Reduction of cleaning services and grounds maintenance leaving many communal areas overgrown and shoddy. The closure of cash offices for rent payment, denial of free swimming for under 18s, the lack of public transport and the blinkered focus on commerce instead of community to regenerate the town.

Perhaps, if the Tory controlled Council did their job and cleaned up in the first place, there would be a better civic pride in the area; and perhaps, if the Tory controlled Council cleaned up grafitti then this kind of stunt wouldn’t be necessary.

Obviously, this stunt is about votes. Local Tories know that they can mobilise their support across the constituency – but a big Labour turnout in Skelmersdale will make it difficult for them to win.

If they treated the people of Skelmersdale with some respect, at the very least granting them the same level of services as enjoyed in other parts of the Borough, then that respect would be reciprocated one way or another in the ballot box. Instead they treat the townsfolk as second-class citizens, not deserving of good Council services but instead reliant upon charitable handouts – from the Tories, no less.

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Ormskirk student housing issues raised in Parliament

Our MP, Rosie Cooper, raised the problems of multiple occupancy housing in parliament yesterday. You can see her asking John Denham about a consultation regarding multiple occupancy housing in this video (scroll forward to 8 minutes 45 seconds)

As I’ve written before here, in leaflets and letters to the paper – this is a problem that has been largely ignored by the authorities until recently and the residents of all the affected roads are to be congratulated for keeping the pressure on the politicians.

The consultation is a valuable opportunity for getting feedback to the department about student housing and the detrimental effect on residents’ quality of life that it can have in some areas. I will be working with local residents on feedback and I have also been in touch with the Borough Labour Group about the Council submission.

However, this is currentlonly a consultation and while it is good that John Denham says that he will take into account submissions made, it doesn’t change the fact that there is more that the Borough Council could be doing today to control the spread of student housing and control the anti-social behaviour of some of the students.

Local Politics

Edge Hill Uni public meeting – some personal notes

I’ve been meaning to write something about the public meeting last Wednesday about Edge Hill University.

Can I apoligise at the start for the length of this post and the rambling nature. This is basically my view of the meeting a couple of days after the event.

The meeting had been arranged by the Ormskirk Community Partnership and they had invited Steve Igoe the pro-vice chancellor of the Uni to address the meeting and discuss the University and town’s future together.

This is the first public meeting that I’ve been to in Ormskirk and it was good to see that the room was basically full.

I must say at the start the I think that the meeting was a lot more interesting than I expected and I was pleased to see such a range of people in the room. Most of whom were there because they have one or more problems with students and anti-social behaviour.

Before I stood for the County Council this year I had been aware of the problems experienced by the people along St Helens Road and Ruff Lane, but not around the rest of the town. It was only by knocking on doors around the town that I came to appreciate the range of problems and the number of people affected (and the county ward didn’t include Wigan Road, Thompson Avenue, St Helens Road, etc).

Coming into the meeting I was sceptical on two levels: firstly, that Steve Igoe would just talk for as long as possible and thus leave no time for questions (I’ve seen that one before!) and that the meeting itself would be overwhelmed by St Helens Road / Ruff Lane residents. That’s not to say that they don’t have a problem, but I was concerned that others might be drowned out by a group that have shown themselves to be well organised and articulate in the past.

Steve Igoe started out by talking a lot about how well the University was doing, it’s market position within the North West and its ambitions to grow further and to be recognised as one of the leading Universities in the region.

There was some considerable murmuring and eye-rolling from those sat near me.

Others got more animated when he moved to the development plans of the University – in particular moving the sports facilities into the green belt and using the freed up space for additional accomodation and car parking.

The Community Partnership had identified three areas of concerns: the growth of the university (and the effect on St Helens Road / Ruff Lane), the movement of students in the town and “pockets” of problems around the town. I was particularly unhappy about the last part, because I think that the quality of life issues for those living near students is going to be the main problem as the student population reaches into more areas in the town.

However, to give the public the credit, they didn’t stick to the suggested areas and basically let rip with their concerns about the
growth of the university and the behaviour of the students. In many ways Steve Igoe got an easy ride because he mainly just had to deal with people making statements about the problems they faced. When presented with a question, he dealt with the issues very well, as one would hope.

During the questions, the most interesting part for me was when the discussion moved to the proportion of students living in an area. It was stated that the proportion living in Ormskirk was around 10% while in parts of some city centres like Liverpool and Manchester it was more like 20%. The University view seemed to be that this was therefore a good thing, but it missed the point that the type of area is completely different in Ormskirk compared to a city centre.

The inappropriate level of students was underlined by a slide used by Steve Igoe himself, citing a North West Development Agency report that stated that an increased student population is good because they live in otherwise deserted parts of town
(perhaps the case in the city centres, but not Ormskirk).

The other concern amongst the public attending the meeting was a disbelief that extra accomodation on the campus itself would lead to an easing of pressure in the town itself. Quite reasonably they asked where would students live in the second and third years of their degrees.

For me, this wasn’t helped by Steve Igoe stating that the University wants to be seen as more than a University for teachers and nurses and that it is expanding the number of courses it does. If that’s the case, then we are likely to have more students who are studying at EHU throughout the academic year, compared to the current situation where, say, 60% are in work placements in schools or hospitals through much of the year.

And so the meeting went on… broken by a surreal moment when County Cllr Rob Bailey stood up, introduced himself and then proceeded to tell the assembled members of the public that there wasn’t actually a problem in Ormskirk and that there had only been a handful of complaints.

It was a real head-in-hands moment.

To try and give Cllr Bailey the benefit of the doubt, what I think (at least hope) he was saying was that if more people complained then it would be taken more seriously. However, his choice of words was manner was very poor and many people felt that he was basically calling them liars for complaining in the first place.

Quite reasonably there were shouts of “do you live in Ormskirk?” to which he just replied “no”… which is possibly the most reasonable thing he said. He could have said “no, I live the other side of Parbold”, but that would have been like a red rag to a bunch of already annoyed bulls. He stood up (which noone else did) and he also stated upstanding for a lot longer than was necessary – just to take a lot of flack.

He’s got a lot to learn.

My intervention wasn’t a classic. The question I really wanted to ask was about growth, which someone else asked right at the start. I made a statement along the lines of there being a problem across the town – which I felt needed making because I was concerned about a possible mis-reprensentation of the meeting, but by the end of the meeting it was quite clear that was the case anyway.

Having said all this, the Ormskirk Community Partnership should be congratulated for organising the meeting. If I have any criticism of it, it is that there didn’t seem to be a conclusion, a way forward. The University’s representative heard the concerns, but it felt like he would just go back and the Uni would carry on with their plans as if it hadn’t taken place.

I am one of those who wants EHU to succeed further and to build on the success it already has. However, I also want the residents to be able to enjoy living in a market town without the problems that come about with high numbers of students living in the area.

I have always said that it is the local Borough Council that has the ultimate responsibility in maintaining this balance, and it is a shame that no-one of authority from the Borough Council was at the meeting.

If anything, the meeting showed that the student population is now making it’s presence known across the town and that only a “whole town” solution to the problem will work. I think that’s a step forward.

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Scarisbrick Parish Council – prison update

I attended the Scarisbrick Parish Council meeting last night, where they were due to discuss the recent reports of a prison to be sited at Hurslton Hall Golf Club.

The discussion was at the beginning of the meeting and was done so that members of the public could also contribute.

I then stayed for most of the rest of the meeting, leaving when it looked like there would be a non-public session near the end. Having said that, I doubt that

Why was I there? Because I think that a prison at Scarisbrick would have a massive effect on Ormskirk as well as Scarisbrick. There is no doubt that the infrastucture in Scarisbrick wouldn’t support the services and staff that are needed by such an institution and that Ormskirk would be the obvious source of resources. So I wanted to know what the current situation is.

The Chair should be congratulated for trying to keep the meeting as non-political as possible. However, the main debate seemed to be around the nature of reassurances that have come from our MP.

A leaflet from Rosie Cooper had been distributed in the village earlier that day which included a letter from Jack Straw saying that yes, Scarisbrick had been considered for a prison but that it wasn’t suitable for the Titan prisons; and that there are now no plans for a prison in the village.

Cllr Andrew Fowler had a series of questions against this: basically that the letter referred to the Titan scheme of prisons which had been abandoned, that there was no guarantee that a future prison wouldn’t be built on the site and then regrettably some nit-picking about the golf club being on Hurlston Lane not Southport Road. I say regrettably, because he started to veer towards party politics which was completely unnecessary.

Between these two points there was an impasse. Rosie Cooper’s office manager attended the meeting to present the situation and to reassure those present that Rosie was doing all that she could to prevent it from happening. He used the analogy that we go to bed assuming that we’ll wake up in the morning, but that we can’t be 100% certain. However, Cllr Fowler wanted a copper-bottomed guarantee that it wouldn’t happen.

The difficulty is that there is now a fresh round to find sites for the smaller mini-Titans. No-one can honestly say that a site is or isn’t included. There is a process that will have to take place. The assurance that we got about the new process was that there would be a “massive breach of trust” between the Justice Department and Rosie should the prison go ahead. One member of the public agreed that Rosie would certainly have “egg on her face” if a prison did go ahead given the leaflet that had been distributed.

If I’m honest, I didn’t come away knowing anything more than when I went in. Indeed, I think that most of the interested members of the public will have felt the same way. The problem being that these arguments are usually carried out in terms of absolutes, which in these circumstances, they can’t.

The assurances about the prison not being built shifted from a near-absolute guarantee that it wouldn’t be built to one with questions regarding the correspondence presented and concerns about the forthcoming mini-Titan search.

Similarly, the position presented by Cllr Fowler was weak because he undermined some of the points he was trying to make by appearing to stray into party politics (and was stopped by the Chair).

In the end the Parish Council took a vote that it would continue to object to a prison being built in Scarisbrick and maintain a level of vigilance in the future.

For me there was a missed opportunity. The argument was around whether Jack Straw and Rosie Cooper were effectively mis-informing people, when really it should have been about what to do if it comes on the radar again.

The correspondence says that Scarisbrick was considered, but wasn’t suitable for the large Titan prisons. A notice regarding prospective prison sites will again be published in the Estates Gazette and I doubt it will say “no sites from Scarisbrick, please”. There remains the possibility that Scarisbrick will appear on a list somewhere.

The question has to be: if Scarisbrick was unsuitable for a full-on Titan, is it still unsuitable for a mini-Titan – because that will be the first test from the Justice department. Specifically, we need to know: by what criteria was Scarisbrick deemed to be unsuitable for a Titan? and then it follows that we should ask what criteria will used to judge the prospective mini-Titan sites?

At least that would give us all a better understanding of where we are, what might happen in the future and how to resist it.

Local Politics

Post-election thanks!

Just a quick post to say thanks to all those who supported me one way or another at the County elections.

From basically a standing start when I was selected in February we’ve been able to get around most of the town, talk to people and start a dialogue which I hope will continue over the coming years. We’ve had supporters out helping deliver leaflets and knocking on doors, with a real sense of optimism which has been lacking in the past few elections.

We also kept up the work during the Telegraph’s MP’s expenses onslaught. The reaction on the doorstep changed from broadly positive to broadly negative, combative and angry. It was clear that a lot of support was moving over towards UKIP or simply choosing not to vote.

It is extremely pleasing that we increased our share of the vote compared to last year’s elections in Scott and Knowsley. I honestly expected us to see a drop in support around the same as the Tories, but that didn’t happen.

I think it’s because we didn’t take the electorate for granted. We listened and tried to respond to what we were hearing on the doorstep.

We must have done something right because in the days before the election, I had people stopping me in the street wishing me good luck for Thursday.

Many people are worried about the declining state of the town, the knock-on effects of the University’s growth and the increase in traffic. These are problems that will not go away. In particular the state of the town and managing the University’s impact have come about while Conservatives have been in control of the Council. These won’t improve without some serious changes.

Standing this year was always going to be difficult, but thanks to a brilliant bunch of volunteers we bucked the trend, held our own and created a great platform to move forward in Ormskirk.

County 2009, Local Politics, Ormskirk

Election results stats, first cut

To try and gauge where we are following the elections, I did some comparisons of votes cast in the county elections compared to the district elections last year. Pointless doing a straight comparison with 2005 since there was a general election and things have changed so much since then.

The spreadsheet below is calculated by taking the share of the vote in 2009 and subtracting the share of the vote in 2008. Where there wasn’t an election in 2008 I went back to 2007 or 2006 (in the case of Hesketh with Becconsall, I took the last election that was contested).

The obvious highlights are:

  • Labour increased the share of the vote in West Lancs North and Ormskirk West – I think that bucks the national trend.
  • UKIP did incredibly well. Although they didn’t win any seats, they increased their share of the vote across the borough.
  • The Conservative vote dropped significantly across the borough, but they still won seats because they were so far ahead in all areas last year.

I’ll take a look at the stats over the past five years and will post something later, to put things into perspective.

Local Politics

Congratulations to Mr Beale and Holland Moor Primary School

I just read this report saying that Holland Moor Primary School had been recognised as one of the outstanding schools of the country.

It’s no surprise. I visited this school when I was a Councillor in Moorside and it is an amazing place of learning. Mr Beale, the headmaster, has built a school that equally concerned about the locality and nearby residents as it was the children.

Their commitment to special needs learning and also to using more male primary school teachers was great to see, as well as the place having a real ‘buzz’ (there were visiting musicians when I popped in during the school day).

Holland Moor Primary deserves all the awards and recognition it is currently receiving and I wish them all the very best.